The Canterbury Tales
by Geoffrey Chaucer
The Canterbury Tales is a funny and moving collection of fictional life stories, written in a language now known as Middle English in the 14th century. It’s accessible to the modern reader, but can be a little hard to follow. If you’d like to read the stories, but don’t have the time to get into the language, reading a modern translation—like poet, author and translator David Wright’s The Canterbury Tales: A Prose Version in Modern English—is a good option.
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“Each individual tale can be interpreted in so many ways—Chaucer really opens up possibilities of multiple interpretations. Even when he seems to give you a clear moral, that moral is never effective or convincing. He’s always saying: ‘Find your own moral; find your own meaning.’” Read more...
The Canterbury Tales: A Reading List
Marion Turner, Biographer
